Reserve chief brings executive skills to mission

The new chief of the Army Reserve is determined to run the force like a CEO — and with the budget crunch engulfing the military these days, he’s ready to get down to business.

“The government by design is supposed to be effective, but they’re not designed always to be efficient,” explained Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Talley, the co-founder and former CEO of the Arizona-based engineering and research company Environmental Technology Solutions. “In the private sector, you have to be effective and efficient, or you go out of business.”

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Talley’s priorities for the Army Reserve are telling of his background as a chief executive. “Audit readiness” is part of his action plan.

“How do we make our auditing processes transparent so people can see what a great value we are for the money?” he mused during an interview with POLITICO. “If we can’t do that in the Army Reserve, there’s no hope for the Army to be able to do it. So, I think we can lead that.”

When he took command in early June, Talley wrote a paper, titled “Rally Points,” detailing his strategic priorities for his four-year term — a rare approach for someone starting this type of command. And in his first few months on the job, he’s focused on communicating that agenda to the reserves, the Pentagon and Capitol Hill.

One of his other main focuses is getting more reservists from the private sector.

“If you’re not careful, you’ll end up with a Reserve component that’s a bunch of folks that are strictly from the public sector. Now is that bad? I’d argue that’s bad,” Talley said. “We’ve got to make sure that a lot of the skill sets we need in the Army come through the Army Reserve … and then acquire skills where that technical ability is the highest — in the private sector.”

On Oct. 2, there were 15,531 Army Reserve soldiers activated worldwide. Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, 207,918 Army Reserve soldiers have been activated. And the increasing frequency of activation has led to some reluctance to hire reservists in the private sector, a problem Talley said he’s determined to address.

While public employees — firefighters, police officers and others — are critical professions, Talley explained the success of the Army is tied in part to its reservists with skills honed in the business world.

“When you’re bringing that reservist on board, their technical skills may be, in many cases, higher than the technical skills of the active component,” he said. “The Army’s not really spending the money for them to sharpen that skill set that they’re using in performance of those military duties. The civilian sector is paying for that.”

Readers' Comments (1)

Look at the picture, see the shoulder patch on the left shoulder, Eagle heads facing in two different direction. The reason why, The Army Reserve command is just as political along with the Guard as our elected politicans, and those Eagle facing in different directions are speaking out of both sides of their mouths.